


A Game of Rings

by Daaaaabs



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aegon's Conquest, Crossover, Gen, I'm Sorry Tolkien, Inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire, Inspired by The Lord of the Rings, Pre-Lord of The Rings, Third Age
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 17:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22467370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daaaaabs/pseuds/Daaaaabs
Summary: Isildur, the High King of the Realms in Exile, is slain at the Gladden Fields. With the line of Elendil the Tall now broken and the Ring of Power lost and found, the fates of the eight kingdoms of the middle-men - and, perhaps, the fate of Middle-Earth - are left hanging in the balance.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 5





	A Game of Rings

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Forum of Thrones](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/554806) by LiquidChicago. 



“They’ll destroy us if we aren’t quick.”

Haroan thumbed a fat hand towards the fog-strewn mountains to the west. “The goblins.”

Ohtar sighed and swung his arms, knocking a few flecks of mud off the cover of his cloak. “You ever talk about anything except us getting attacked out here, Haroan?”

“Do you blame me?”, The tall knight said. “It’s a security concern, and the wilderness is a dangerous place indeed.” He squinted his eyes as he looked across the bogs to either side. “Tall reeds and trees could be covering any number of enemies.”

“Yet none so far,” Ohtar said. “Could be some, but complaining about it won’t help any.”

“I’m not complaining. When was the last time you ever went outside the King’s keep?”

The young ward Celebrusc tugged his cloak tighter over his short auburn curls. “I’m not so sure. Grumpkins and snarks in a muddy, bug-infested marsh like this? Isn’t that a thought. Maybe he’s hiding them all to jump out at us after night comes.”

Ohtar smiled. Haroan didn’t.

Around them was a company of some two-hundred knights, most of King Isildur’s retinue accompanied by his three eldest sons. The King’s banner rode with them at the fore, held high but flying low and laden from many days of travel. The path ahead was clear but had turned to shallow muck in the winter rains, horse-hooves and feet sinking with wet squelches at every step. Birds and ravens chirped long and low like the muted trumpet-calls of the White City. The pointed steel-and-silver helms of the company stood as bright peaks against the haze of green and brown and grey on the horizon, full suits of armor rattling and panging with droplets of rain. In the lighting, their reflections seemed to twist about into long, slow streaks of muted color. Many men behind them slept in their saddles.

Ohtar wrung his hands for heat. The fires that had warmed him hours before felt like a distant memory, and his stomach longed for rabbit stew. A thin wool cap and heavy cloak was all there was to protect him and the others from the unrelenting rain, soaking within hours any items left exposed. Once, both were shining black and trimmed with silver, new and fresh and smelling of faint kingsfoil. Now, it was a bear pelt. 

“You’re the children of summer both,” he said, sitting upright. The weight of his full plate didn’t seem to bother him. “There are no grumpkins and snarks in a world like this. Maybe absent, for a time, but nothing there to joke about. Have you seen the look on their faces? The wretched color of their hides and hair? Twisted and deformed and bloated with pus, all of them, but always there, _always_ there, and never flinching. If you’d ever look upon the edges of our camp just after dusk, you’d see one of a thousand crimson eyes, small and beady and following you until the end comes.” Haroan looked stiff. “Fight in a war, boy, and you’ll see that the enemy can never be defeated.”

Estelmo, the heir Elendur’s Squire, shrugged as he rode his horse to Haroan’s left, trying to hide his riding-sores. “Come now, don’t try to scare him. Celebrusc has a point. When was the last time they ranged this far into the vales? Twenty, thirty years?” He paused to adjust the rattling scabbard at his side. “What about the elves and the woodsmen, besides?”

“Less than that,” Haroan said with a sigh. “The rangers claim that some scattered north near Greenwood the Great about the time the war ended. Fled into the hills and mountains, they said, darkening the sky from Dwarrowdelf to Angmar. Two days across the Gladden, or so the King’s claimed, yet we’ve made barely four already - _and_ the rains have slowed our passage. I can’t tell how far they’ve been following our trail, though, if the Valemen and Skinchangers haven’t kept them away.” He motioned with a wide sweep of his arms. “Why do you think all of us are here? With the King, that is.”

“You’d know, wouldn’t you?”, Estelmo said, turning to Ohtar. “You’re his squire.”

Ohtar shrugged. “Protection. We could’ve gone by ship to Oldtown or rode through the Pukel-pass near Rohan, but he insisted. Muttered something about his son, or sons, but didn’t say the rest. I pray he has a reason to come this close to any orc of the mountains.”

“Didn’t say it to me, either,” Estelmo added. “The heir, Elendur, was just as silent. Hard to believe the future King of Arnor would have reason to be so secretive with his own squire.”

“Not all things can be trusted to squires,” said Haroan, a broad smile on his face. “Still, he’s taking you along with his company north. Could have locked you in the White Tower instead, and good riddance to it.” 

“Could be transferring us all to the Northern Kingdom,” Ohtar responded. “Still, though, couldn’t he just send for us by ship if that’s the case? It’s not like the Ironborn to range much past the Crackclaw Point in Belfalas, or so i’m told.”

Haroan shrugged while Estelmo looked away. “Never was a man of strategy.” 

Celebrusc, meanwhile, was still wide-eyed and slack-jawed, glancing back and forth between the two. “The Rangers of Ithilien?”, he interjected. “You rode with them?”  
“For a time,” Haroan admitted. “I’ve never much enjoyed the life of the deep country.”

“Yet, here you are,” Estelmo said, “travelling under the King’s banner most of a fortnight to Rivendell, and then the unknown lands beyond. All forested, all dark, with nought a town in a hundred leagues. Almost like justice for missing the war, don’t you think so?” Ohtar smiled with sad eyes. 

“You can glorify a war without fighting in it,” Haroan said. “Maybe that’s better for you squires behind your walls or in your camps. Ithilien was almost overrun while I was there. Nothing left to glorify but mud and rocks.”

“Hey, look!”

Celebrusc gestured at the path ahead, bending sharply right and disappearing behind a high ridge to the company’s right some fifty feet into the air. The distant sound of running water melded with the falling rain, and the rustle of the reeds gave way to the pat of leaf on stem. Both sides of the path were forested, with a wide area of soggy cover adjacent to the river. He could almost feel the waters near his horse’s feet, lapping in slow, undulant waves through the fens from the river’s current. 

_The River Gladden,_ Ohtar thought, _overflowing._

“There it is,” motioned Estelmo. “We’re not far from the crossing, now.”

The squire looked closer. The path ahead was oddly cleared and flat, as if recently used. _Strange,_ Ohtar thought. _Aren’t we supposed to be in wilderness?_

Before he could continue, Ohtar felt a strange tap on his shoulder. It was Haroan, who motioned with a finger to the line of trees above them. “See that?”, he said softly. “Tallest point in fifteen miles. Land around here’s flat as polished stone. Save for the hills.” Ohtar almost thought it funny, but something bit at him inside. Shapes, dark shapes, seemed to bend and twist amongst the dense and soggy foliage, Melding with the trees and branches the more he stared upon them. The wind had slowed, now, and Ohtar almost thought he had heard breathing, but it was no more to him than but a sigh upon the wind. Estelmo and Celebrusc had ridden up aside each-other, exchanging jokes and pleasantries and many thoughts of home. The Captain seemed distant and kept looking to the riverbank. “Haroan,” Ohtar whispered. “The birds are quiet.”

Haroan put his armored fist up before the others could continue, bidding them to silence. Reaching with his free hand, the Captain tugged his helmet-straps and laid it at his side with blank wide eyes, listening to the wind in the fens and the pound of the rain and the slow marching blows of the company. 

No distant hooves.

No chirps or warbles. 

_Nothing._

And then he saw it.

He turned and tried to shout but only screams escaped his mouth, a whizzing crossbow bolt piercing his open neck just beneath his chin. Ohtar watched as the Captain jerked from his horse to smash the ground in a dull metallic thud, a crimson river welling from within and out his mouth. From the moment he hit the ground, Ohtar heard terrible shouts from up the ridge and in the reeds as scores and ranks of men drew forward - armored men, not orcs, with tawny skin and blood-red shields with golden lions on them. _Lannisters,_ he thought. All at once, in but a moment, the column descended into chaos.

The squire drew his polished blade, his muscles slowly tensing up. His hands shook. Scores of shots ran up and down the column on both sides, tossing men in mud and burying them beneath their screaming horses. What knights still stood at the front and rear engaged in melee with the foe, fighting spears with swords and bolts with shields and platemail. Ohtar whirled about, his heart like drumbeats in his chest, but no familiar faces greeted his. All the while, Ohtar watched as the Captain tried to stand and draw his sword, coughing and sputtering and throwing out more blood each time. With every ragged breath he turned more pale, and his gaze averted Ohtar’s eyes though his arms reached for him. He thought of driving a blade through the man’s stomach, ending his suffering, until a cry of anger appeared to his left side, rushing at him. Ohtar parried two of the soldier’s blows and drove a third into his chest, watching with wide eyes as the dead man bled beneath him next to the blood-drenched body of the Captain.

Ohtar looked at his sword, a thin line of red flowing from the tip across his hands. The fear in the pit of his stomach flared. Everything around him looked surreal - flashes of rain upon blade, rivers of red and sickly green running from piles of bodies covered in muck. The distant thunk of crossbows piercing metal rang out all around him, while the screams and thresh of dying men had become indistinguishable from the ground’s muddy squelch beneath him. The sound of battle was more like the screams of the damned. He could hear Isildur’s voice calling him near the company’s fore. 

_Isildur!,_ Ohtar thought with shaking eyes. Sword in hand, he drove forward, each unsure step met by the groan and crunch of busted metal and bones. For every knight, three of the enemy lay beneath him. Though the King’s word could not be far from him, each step appeared as if a mile wide, and each of the enemy seemed to be replaced by ten with every stroke of the sword. By now, he could feel the mud and bile washing into his curly jet-black hair, staining it and the White Tree on his surcoat a deep shade of auburn. Ohtar turned around and looked. The King’s shouts seemed to come from everywhere. Lost. 

_I’m going to die here,_ he thought. 

_“Ohtar!”_

The familiar shout pierced the din from towards the riverbank. Ohtar whirled about, finding only the pale face of Estelmo staring back at him, red and exhausted. Ohtar panted, wiping the sweat from his brow as he awkwardly stumbled towards him. “The King-”

“Ahead,” Estelmo reassured, motioning to the far side of the ridge. His hands were empty. “I don’t know what’s happened here, or why, but I do know that it must involve our deaths. If the King and his heirs are to die here, some of him must survive with word to Arnor. Some of us must survive to tell the truth.”

He wiped the mud from Ohtar’s surcoat with shaking hands, letting the sky above reflect the White Tree once again. Ohtar finally met his gaze, and he understood. “Why not you?”

“You’re the King’s squire,” Estelmo said, looking him in the eyes. “I’m only the Heir’s. Get the King’s wor-”

The older squire was cut off by a heavy armored cuff striking his ringmailed shoulder, sending him flying downwards into the Gladden’s icy current. He reached for his sword, but felt only his belt-straps instead. The scabbard was missing. 

_Loose,_ Ohtar thought. 

The squire turned before he could see his friend cut down with a dull thud, small tears welling in his eyes. All he knew was the numb texture of the water and the smell of the spring rain and the rivers of red, like veins of parchment-ink, running slow down the river. Ohtar staggered to his sword with sullen eyes, moving slowly across the field towards where the front of the Company had used to be. Sure enough, a thin shield-wall remained, fighting desperately to break the battle’s tide against the King. Some archers from the second rank tried to raise their steel-bows to the men above them, each shot plunging into the treeline with nought but more screams and blood upon the cliff-sides. In the center was Isildur, the son of Elendil, the one which Ohtar called his master. The man himself was tall, about seven feet or more, but on his knees looked only three. His regal armor, like Ohtar, was stained and streaked by the refuse of battle, with a small leather pouch slung over it. A small golden band glinted softly on his chest, unblemished despite the death around them. The once-polished breastplate of a black-haired prince lay detached at the King’s feet, riddled with three great bolts and crusty scars filled with mud and the remnants of gore. The King cradled it softly much like one would cradle a child.

Ohtar knelt and stretched his hand towards him, which was seized by Isildur the moment he saw it near. He looked at it intrigued, with wild eyes, before he traced it up to meet the squire’s gaze. His own hands were shaking, cold as ice and gnarled as if worn. 

“Ohtar? Squire?” the King said, looking at him strangely. “Is it… really you, with me?” The squire nodded. “They’re closing in. We must make haste to-”

The King closed his eyes, steadying himself. “Elendur is dead. My son, my heir. My line. All in shadow. Soon, we all shall be dead, and the fens and trees will be our gravestones.” Tossing aside the breastplate, he unslung the leather pack and pushed it into Ohtar’s arms, the squire watching with a transfixed gaze. “The darkness grows, and my house passes. Ohtar,” the King said, opening his eyes, “There is _no time._ You must find way to Rivendell. It lies across the High Pass, hidden in a gorge near the Forge of Bruinen. Seek lord Elrond. Tell him what has happened here.”

“And the pack?”

“The Shards of Narsil,” Isildur said with a grave expression, “and the symbols of the King. You _must_ keep them safe, Ohtar, no matter what befalls you on the way.”

“They’re closing in!”, another voice shouted, turning to face the King. His breastplate bore the same pattern as the cradled figure on the ground. “Isildur!”

The King glanced at the man and pulled Ohtar closer. “Look for Valandil, a boy of sixteen. He has dwelt there for many years in the custody of Elrond. As your King, I tell you now: he is your new master.”

Ohtar was distraught. “I don’t understand. Why-”

Isildur shook him. “You have sworn an oath, given your life and service for the sake of mine, have you not?”

“I- I-”

“Leave! While you still have time left with you, fool! If you die here, all will be in vain.” The King’s voice bellowed, loud and angry. _“Go!”_

Ohtar sheathed his sword and turned to run. The shield-wall had begun to buckle - spear-points and sword-scabs had worked their way well into the first rank, with many men still trying to hold on despite the errant bolts and points thrust through them. “Aratan!” Another voice called from the opposite side of the column, his arm outstretched as if to grab and pull himself away from his assailants. Aratan turned and looked, breaking rank when he saw him with his shield upwards. The prince swung wildly, striving for his brother and calling his name - _“Ciryon, Ciryon!”_ \- as if to signal his retreat, though the man himself was frozen deep in shock. Ohtar watched the younger prince’s face contort while his brother’s limbs were hacked to pieces, and himself soon after. 

Ohtar stayed low, almost loping on his hands and feet. He could feel his boots and greaves filling rapidly with water. The metal of his cuirass rattled softly in the reeds, mixing with the winds and rains into a cold weight upon his soaked shoulders. Isildur rallied his men with his sword raised high, slowly moving the shield-wall forward to Ciryon’s body, struggling to stand. The lion-shielded soldiers were closing in on all sides. Isildur ran to him. 

“My King,” Ciryon said, “Elendur is dead, and Aratan is dying.”

“No, no, my son,” Isildur said. His knotted locks draped over him like a death veil.

“Isildur, listen. As your last son and counsellor, I must advise - no, command - your leave, as you commanded Ohtar.”

The King could not believe his eyes. “I would rather die a hundred deaths from a thousand cuts than see another son of mine abandoned. I would rather-”

“Go!”, Ciryon croaked, his dry lips cracking against the heavy rains. “Take your burden, and at all costs bring it to the Keepers - even at the cost of abandoning your men and me.”

There was a long pause from both men, the last of the archers falling limply to the ground. “You know I speak the truth. It is _over._ ”

Without another word, Isildur laid his body at his feet, the prince pulling his arm and blade diagonally across his surcoat. The King looked to him for a long while as he pulled the Ring from off his chest. 

“Forgive me.”

Instantly, the King had disappeared. 

Ohtar looked around him. The King’s last stand had formed a small gap in the lines, wide enough to wade closer to the riverbank unseen. He tugged the leather pack closer to him and proceeded, water-filled boots sinking up and down in the silt. He could see a ghostly splashing in the river, far away from him but closer to the water’s further edge. Rocks displaced and shed their course as the unseen figure struggled in the water, fighting the current with increasingly exhausted steps. Before the squire knew it, Isildur reappeared, half-submerged within the water and struggling for breath. _Down, you fool!,_ he thought, wanting more than anything to scream aloud. His thoughts, however, fell on a deaf mind just as the King stood, a multitude of bolts soon whizzing through his armor and knocking him limply in the river. Ohtar and Isildur both watched helpless as the golden ring slipped from his fingers and sank within the riverbed.

Ohtar pressed his fist to his forehead and then his mouth, uttering a meager prayer to Erú. The storm had turned to thunder, now, and the brown and red of battle was running slowly to the river.  
_Grumpkins and snarks,_ Ohtar thought. Before he could turn back, he ran.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Though i'll try to update this as much as possible, i'll be pretty busy for the next five or so months, so posting might be pretty infrequent. Bear with me - more is coming soon! 
> 
> Also, don't feel like you need to read 'Forum of Thrones' to understand this fic. Though i'm certainly taking inspiration from their characters, the story and plot are entirely original (or, at least, as original as fanfiction can be). I'll be sure to introduce the world and characters as they become important.
> 
> Until next time - _tenn' enomentielva!_ Be seeing you!


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